i just finished reading the slap by christos tsiolkas. it only took a couple of weeks - unusual for me, but a lot of uni reading didn't happen as a result.
my connection was strong. i needed to keep reading, to think through these stories, to be challenged by these characters. i wanted to hate all of them at some point, but it was impossible. they were too present, all too real. it's like when you think you hate someone because you have them pegged, you associate them with that thing that bothers you (too stupid, too middle-class, too materialistic, too solipsist, too proud, too desperate...). and then you fall into a conversation with them and realise that with their words and expressions, their intimacy, the hatred can't survive. they are as vulnerable as me. they are flesh and pain and curiosity and fear. perhaps distance allows certain projections - a belief that they are not like me, and that therefore i must be okay. maybe this is what tsiolkas is showing us. how we hate and discredit others in our necessary struggles to be.
i caught the train home today. my newcastle stays get better each time. i recovered from this flu. i walked, slept, ate, and chatted with mark. we snuggled under blankets in the cool night air. i watched his new face, created by his new glasses. it was strange at first, but i loved it more and more. it's like this modification matches other changes in him. or at least, my version of him.
i read tsiolkas for most of the train trip. a woman sat next to me at gosford and kept apologising for her bags, or each time her leg or arm touched me. i wanted to explain that none of this warranted an apology. i imagined she was always apologising, always seeing herself as a nuisance. this time to the reading man on the train, other times to her husband, to her kids, to her friends. she smelt of nice perfume. it was comforting. i wish she could relax, melt into the seat, not care about me, her husband across the aisle, other commuters. she reads from a magazine. as we approach strathfield she asks if i can get past her suitcase and apologises once more.
at newtown station the sun is shining, i walk the stairs, i put on my broken sunglasses. i walk enmore road, my familiar path to home. a well trodden path. but after 3 days away it feels like a ceremonial walk in which i reconnect to everyday life. it's like that first lap of swimming where you're feeling the water, finding coordination, rehearsing for the next lap. the sun makes it more inviting. and the people... there are people!... and i feel their energy.
mum rang tonight. i knew there was a reason by the tone in her voice and because we chatted just last week. my cousin shane killed himself. a cousin i (and my parents) had little to do with. his parents divorced when he was about 10, so he moved away with his mother. but my parents are upset for his dad (dad's brother), for his family. he was 38. he gassed himself in queensland. he has a 13 year old son. these are the facts i'm told, but i know nothing of him or his life. i can't feel upset. though i feel a little sad for my uncle.
more tsiolkas, read in the bath. the water is too hot and made green from the bath salts. a character's suicide contemplation involves a dose of emerald liquid. i become aware of the bath, a seemingly common space for suicide. it would be a comfortable way to die. is it unusual to never contemplate suicide? i'm always shocked when people admit to thinking about it. maybe i don't value life enough to think about ending it. or maybe i have the right combination of laziness and curiosity. according to camus, it is only the absurb who don't kill themselves. but most of us are perverted enough to keep living. to keep rolling that stone up the hill, watching it roll down, and starting all over again.
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